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College of Cartographers has a nice secret society ring to it. It's versatile as well. I can imagine it being applied to explorer-adventurers out to conquer terra incognita or a shadowy group governing the world.
I've always enjoyed Lewis Carroll's talk of maps:
"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"
"About six inches to the mile."
"Only six inches!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"
"Have you used it much?" I enquired.
"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.
From Sylvie and Bruno Concluded by Lewis Carroll, first published in 1893.
Do you think you could summarise it for everybody in a post?
I'm not confident I could do a good job of it. He proposes that most problems in relationships come from our mythologies about ourselves and others. In order to have good relationships, we have to be able to be honest about what's actually going on underneath those mythologies. Obviously this involves work on ourselves, and we should help our partner to do the same (not by trying to change them, but by assisting them in discovering what is actually going on for them). He calls his approach to this kind of communication the "Real-Time Relationship."
To quote from the book: "The Real-Time Relationship (RTR) is based on two core principles, designed to liberate both you and others in your communication with each other: 1. Thoughts precede emotions. 2. Honesty requires that we communicate our thoughts and feelings, not our conclusions."
For a shorter read on relationships, you might like to try his "On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion". Be forewarned that, even if you disagree, you may find either book an uncomfortable read.
In response to
The ideas you're not ready to post
I'd be interested in reading (but not writing) a post about rationalist relationships, specifically the interplay of manipulation, honesty and respect.
Seems more like a group chat than a post, but let's see what you all think.
I've found the work of Stefan Molyneux to be very insightful with regards to this (his other work has also been pretty influential for me).
You can find his books for free here. I haven't actually read his book on this specific topic ("Real-Time Relationships: The Logic of Love") since I was following his podcasting and forums pretty closely while he was working up to writing it.
In response to
Rationality Quotes - April 2009
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?
Elizabeth Anscombe: I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Well what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?
If you don't know about relative motion and inertia, then it does seem like the sun moves around the earth (even when you know, it still looks that way). Prior to the "Copernican" revolution, it was generally thought that our sense experience of everyday life was sufficient to expose the truth to us. Those two things combined make a major roadblock in establishing that the earth rotates.
Now we can fully appreciate that it doesn't even make sense to make an absolute statement either way. If earth is taken to be stationary, then the sun does move around it (interestingly, this was Tycho Brahe's solution to the problem of shifting to a helio-centric view.)
Maybe I'll do a longer reply later... The basic answer is that you can do the impossible but it comes with a price. Burn down every obstacle, sacrifice whatever it takes, devote any amount of time and any amount of energy required? You only get a few shots of that magnitude. Sure, if I made it the one priority in my life and gave up that FAI stuff, I could lose weight.
I find it hard to believe that you haven't thought about the following, but you haven't mentioned it so I will. Conventional wisdom says:
1) Being at a healthy weight/having a 'healthy lifestyle' will (accidents and terminal genetic disorders aside) result in you living a longer life. This means more time to work on FAI stuff.
2) Exercise and good diet tend to increase feelings of well being and energy levels. This means better/more effective work on FAI stuff.
Discounting physical health and concentrating on intellectual life seems to me to be a status symbol for many intellectuals. But I would think that spending time and mental energy on physical well being would give larger benefits, in the long term, to one's intellectual endeavours.
Your story suggests that it was by accident. But this does not sound likely. Throttling takes time. Subdueing a man does not require choking.
It's hard to say what happened at this remove, but it's not inconceivable that a strong well-fed man could accidentally kill a weaker man he was trying to subdue. Adrenaline would tend to shut down the man's higher brain functions and give him more strength than he would ordinarily have. Under those conditions a man might kill by inadvertent use of a blood choke or simply by compressive asphyxia. We also don't know if the highwayman had a hidden defect that made him particularly vulnerable.
Blood chokes still take several minutes to effect brain damage/death. I find the idea of accidentally throttling someone to death fairly suspicious. Besides, if it was truly an accident then where does Browne's guilt come from? I don't think the story suggested it was an accident.
"Enlightenment" and "nirvana" are probably ways of hacking the brain to enter certain states at will rather than because of external stimuli. I suspect as our understanding of the brain increases we will eventually have "meditation machines" that simulate this effect.
I've recently started reading a book on the changes which Zen meditation seems to cause on neurology and consciousness, authored by a neurologist. The premise seems to fit with what you're saying.
I've heard that some meditative states (as measured by brain wave patterns) can be induced through the use of devices employing flashing lights and audio interference at certain frequencies ("binaural beats"). I've never really spent the time to investigate it seriously and there seems to be a fair amount of new-agey crap surrounding the idea, but it may have some merit.
It would certainly be possible for the character to act very rationally within the internal logic of the world which they inhabit, even if that world isn't the same as our own.
But I don't particularly remember that from the book. I remember lots of politics and intrigue, but I think we need more than that to fit Eliezer's criteria for "rationalist fiction", otherwise let's talk about John Grisham novels.
To be clear: I'm not saying Dune isn't a rationalist book. I'm just asking for specific examples to refresh my memory.
I was indeed thinking of the Mentats and Bene Gesserit. As you both point out, there was a significant mystical aspect to it. I suppose I was thinking more of the approach taken to mental training (within the world's internally consistent, but mystical, framework) rather than any specific techniques or events.
Mentats on the other hand have "minds developed to staggering heights of cognitive and analytical ability" (thanks Wikipedia) which would seem to fit the bill.
On the other hand, I suppose that neither of these instances are quite what Eliezer was after, as "you can't go out and do it at home".
In response to
Rationalist Fiction
The Dune series and Neal Stephenson's latest novel Anathem both come to mind. The Dune series includes a number of plot devices involving mental discipline (although it's all semi-mystical.) The world of Anathem, on the other hand, is split into two factions, one of which is specifically rationalist. It gets pretty philosophical and weird toward the end, but it mostly involves rationalist characters using math/science/etc to overcome the hurdles in their way. The world it describes sounds pretty similair to what I've read of Eliezer's Bayesian Conspiracy.
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That's not the cached thought; the cached thought is what you think in between thinking about the question and deciding you'd rather procrastinate.
For example:
What does it say about you that you didn't?
IOW, the question isn't "what do I do first?" the question is, what bad thing will happen if you DON'T?
Most of the rest of your post is just the anosognosiac ramblings of your conscious mind, making things much more complicated than they are. We don't procrastinate for complex reasons; everything boils down to a thought that you're avoiding.
Sometimes -- rarely -- the thought you're avoiding is about the task itself. But when it's chronic, the thought is nearly always something about you, and what it "means" about you if you don't do it.
So ask and answer that question first.
What do you do with the answer, though? I have a fair idea of why most of my procrastination occurs (if I leave something til the last minute and make a hash of it, I have a convenient excuse to protect my ego) but that has never seemed to help me actually overcome it.